


Foresight

by rayningnight



Category: Death Note
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, For Want of a Nail, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, Prophetic Dreams, What-If, and her brother is one of them, because monsters are real, sayu is confused, sayu is scared, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4547118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayningnight/pseuds/rayningnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sayu dreams of things that scare her, so they can’t be true.</p><blockquote>
  <p>In which Yagami Sayu learns of shinigami before her brother, dreams of a future too fantastical and horrifying to be real, but it is <em>him</em> — not Light, not her brother, no <em>no no no</em> — that still scares her more each day.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	1. monsters in her family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this on whim. I vaguely have an idea where I'm going with this. If you don't like it, kindly press the arrow at the top left corner of your screen, because I don't care, this was all written for my own amusement and I may not even continue it until the mood strikes me.

Sayu dreams of things that scare her, so they can't be true.

Her parents think her father's stories started it and so they never turn on the news with her in the room anymore. Her sibling thinks she's annoying and ignores her. Well, until the day he decides to be Perfect McSmileyface and tells her they're just dreams and her young, wild imagination and don't worry, everything will be okay, dear sister.

She is two and toddling, screaming for her brother to get rid of the black and white monster that floats behind him like a second shadow.

She is five and has tantrums and she yells and shrieks and won't touch notebooks or pens or apples for some reason that none of her family can understand and quickly forget, as they buy her binders of papers and number 2 HB pencils.

She is seven and quiet, smiling shy smiles and laughing loud laughs that never reach her eyes as she claps at her brother's latest perfect scores and everything in her family is perfect and normal and _real_.

She is eleven and she remembers everything of a story of a future possibly to come that cannot be true.

.

.

.

_S15. L18._

Sayu has the best and worst brother in the world.

Light thinks she’s average and treats her like one of _them_ , those outsiders, the ones who fawn over him because he’s Perfect McSmileyface; but no, she loves him because Light is her brother and beautiful just the way he is, between Perfect McSmileyface and—and—and Dark Overlord Kira.

( _Kira_ , the name given by outsiders. She prefers simply _the Dark Overlord_ , but that’s probably bias for calling him that after all the years she’s been with Light).

She knows her real brother is that shade of grey in between spotless white and passionate black. She used to think of Light in two ways, just Light and Dark, Black and White, but Dark had split into two, and sandwiched the real him, hidden and only ever peeking through two masks sewn onto a boy who was her brother but who becomes a stranger each passing day with each passing smile.

Perfect McSmileyface is kind and polite and talented and the top dog in everything and the top choice for everyone, who is a natural genius that is so very humble and patient (and so  _so **so**_ **_fake-_** ) that no one can hate him.

Dark Overlord Kira is cunning and cynical and confident, who strives for the best and only wants for the best and will do anything for it, who believes the ends justify the means because of any good faith intentions and no one can stop him.

Light-nii is hardworking and ambitious and has a resolve so much stronger than anyone else’s, who bores easily and is fairly conceited and loves the thrill of adrenaline, who doesn’t understand love or hate or friendship and no one can help him.

(Sayu could have tried, but she was too scared of him before, and the day she overcame that, the time that could have saved him had already passed, and now she's becoming scared of him all over again.)

But she loves him, because Light is her brother, and blood is ever so thick.

(Ha, but she hates the other two, because they're not her brother, they're what he created. PMS and DOrK can just go die in a hole and be buried six feet under.) 

.

.

.

The day she sees numbers hanging over peoples' heads like some sort of video game, she knows something is wrong.

Then she meets Ahppi, the shinigami.

.

.

.

_S7._

Ahppi is a freak of nature, and Sayu means that literally.

He has yellowy marble skin and limbs that shouldn't be able to support his body and is the size of small child. He is so slender, like an anorexic rag doll, wearing a large bowler hat with button black eyes and a gaping, Cheshire-like smiling shark grin, bright red tongue hanging out like some dog, and no nose whatsoever that can be seen. Yet he can talk perfectly fine, and has a sinfully perfect voice with the twang of an upper-crust Brit, or so he says when she asks about his accent.

(Sayu was lucky she was home alone, with her brother tutoring his classmates, her mother out shopping and her father at work, because her scream could very well have reached the ears of her neighbours.)

Sayu is apparently a reincarnation of a shinigami named Syriuc, who had killed a particularly smart human with his knife-like hands for (somehow) blackmailing the Shinigami King. Even though the reasons were pretty substantial, the Shinigami King still had to serve Syriuc with Extreme Level punishment. Ahppi did not go into details, but in the end, Syriuc had garnered enough favour for the Shinigami King to give him some reprieve after six cycles of punishment and had Syriuc's imprint sent to the human world.

And Sayu was his imprint. She did not carry his soul, for shinigami had none, but his imprint was layered on top of hers, and that was why she could see the future that was important because that was a gift the King had bestowed on Syriuc before as one of his highest ranking shinigami who had abided by every rule until his end, and that gift would never leave Syriuc, even past his death. Ahppi had easily found her because his gift was sort of like mind reading, but he didn't go into specifics about that because Sayu first of all wanted to know why Ahppi was even looking for this shinigami who apparently was very great and powerful until his shameful downfall.

Oh, Ahppi was Syriuc's brother.

"...but you just told me before that shinigami can't have babies."

"No, we certainly cannot, but Syriuc was very much my brother."

"...I don't understand."

"You don't have to. Just know you have two brothers now. Or, well, technically you have three...?"

"You're not making any sense, Ahppi-san."

"Oh, please just call me Ahppi, Miss Yagami."

"Um, okay. Then just call me Sayu, too, 'cause, uh, it'd be weird if you didn't."

"Alright."

Silence.

"So... is Light really going to go try and rule the world?"

Ahppi tilts his head, his tongue lolling towards the new pull to gravity. "If you dreamed this, then that is very likely."

Sayu bursts into tears.


	2. monsters under the bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AO3 or my computer did something funny, so I deleted the chapter and reposted.

.

.

.

_S9._

Ahppi is her only true friend.

Oh, she has other, _human_ friends, but Sayu soon realizes they were more like close acquaintances than anything else. Sayu only gossips with them about things irrelevant in her life, giggles about people she cares nothing for, and the only concrete things they know about her is that she's a friendly and athletic girl, her favourite colour is neon pink, she only ever wears practical shoes, and she's allergic to apples.

(Neon pink is a colour never seen in her dreams. She can't wear heels if she has to run. And apples — apples do give her a negative reaction; if it's more mental than physical, who has to know?)

But she tells Ahppi all that and more, and he in turn tells her things about himself, and it's sad, because for all the twelve years she's lived, Sayu feels closer to Ahppi than her own blood family.

Ahppi is very polite and awkward and sincere, who knows and believes in Victorian style social cues and propriety for some unfathomable reason, and doesn't like it when she curses like the modern day teens. He understands why she abhors apples and never indulges anyway, because apples are a vice, an addiction, and they turn him and his kind into thing unrecognizable, and he is proud to say that he's never strayed, if only because of Syriuc, who wouldn't even let him try a banana that one time... but he does like blueberries, and apparently they're more like caffeine to her than nicotine, so Sayu buys them for him once they're in season.

"Thank you, Miss Sayu."

"Just call me, Sayu! Just how many times do I need to say that for you to get it?"

Ahppi's head tilts. "Likely, once more than you are able to, Miss Sayu."

Sayu smiles exasperatedly and pops a berry in her mouth.

She still wonders, more often than not, why Ahppi stays by her side. He could be doing anything in the world for all the time he has, but he's spending it with her? The ragdoll shinigami must have caught her stray thoughts, because he speaks up from his spot under her bed as she turns off the light and tucks herself in.

"Miss Sayu, I have pledged eternity to your counterpart, and unlike the human vows, 'until death do us part,' I will follow Syriuc's imprint until the end of my consciousness," Ahppi says solemnly.

"Oh." Sayu can't say much to that. She's twelve. He's thousands of years old. She's pretty sure that even Light's persuasion skills would not knock down this wall, so there's no point in her bothering. Sayu  _wants_ to free this wonderful shinigami from herself, unchain him and what have you, but Ahppi and her have had this conversation so many times that she's hopeless in an exasperated, pitying way. Ahppi, like his namesake, just smiles wider, revealing vampiric, needle-like teeth that should scare Sayu, but Sayu's used to living in fear, so it brushes off her like water on a rock.

"But you do have a job, right? You told me you were ...higher ranked than most?" She shifts over onto her back.

"Yes, quite," Ahppi pauses. "I believe I should only need to return to my Realm every ...five days... at the least. My work is sporadic, and the length it takes to finish the work depends on variables out of my hands."

"Like other shinigami? Or the King?"

Ahppi remains quiet, and that's more than enough of an answer.

Sayu closes her eyes and sleeps.

.

.

.

_S12._

She sees other shinigami sometimes, and it's exactly like what Ahppi mentioned.

They come in various sizes and shapes, some more humanoid than others, many more ridiculous than frightening, nearly all physically impossible, and some less unique than she realized. Like Ahppi told her, they take on human customs and styles. Just the other day, she saw an anthropomorphic butterfly shinigami wearing an Asian conical hat and several layers of a Korean-styled hanbok, a horned man with a grotesque white face with several red limbs and lobster claws wearing a loincloth and traditional Aztec cape, and what she would think the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland would look like if he'd been boiled in oil and half-mummified and saber-teethed with red lipstick.

Nothing in the world really startles her anymore.

"Hey, Sayu-chan! Wanna go marathon some _Scream_ in subtitles?"

"I'll hold your hand or cover your eyes at the scary parts!"

"Didn't the third one just come out last year?"

"Oh, don't ask her to do that! She's obviously not the type - look at her, she's already quaking."

"Don't be mean, Miyuki-chan! It's probably excitement - like - hey-owow _ow_ , stop hitting me!"

Sayu lets out a small giggle instead of the full-blown laughter until others make the same sound and the class is loud and merry.

She speaks with one particular shinigami one time when she got lonely without Ahppi floating along behind her. It was a strange mantis-esque, dark purple creature with a mutated-horse's skull as it's head, who was friendly in that darkly humorous type of way. She'd been alone in the courtyard and he was interested with the strange red ball in her hand that looked like an apple but clearly was not. Sayu tried to explain that it was a dodgeball, and what exactly the game entailed, but the mantis thing quickly grew uninterested.

Sayu huffs, "You're nothing like Ahppi."

The mantis-horse monster blinks its four large eyes. "You met that stick in the mud? Gah, he's a strange one out of the thousands, yup yup. Doesn't know how to have fun and doesn't even eat apples. Even the King eats apples, whenever we can get them, yup yup."

Sayu pauses. "But aren't they addictive?"

"Well, yeah, that's the point. So juicy and moist and the humans know how to grow 'em just perfect. Anyone with good sense would kill for an apple, yup yup."

She shivers, "...you're all pretty bad people if you'd kill for an  _apple."_

The thing grins, somehow making its skull creak and stretch wide. "Ah, little missy, but shinigami _aren't_ people - we are rotten to the core, black and shrivelled. It's why we love apples that are so clean and fresh and beautifully _red_."

.

.

.

When she turns three, she blows her candles and wishes for her brother to go away.

When she turns seven, she blows her candles and wishes for her brother back.

When she turns thirteen, she blows her candles and wishes.

The smoke smells sweet.

 

.

.

.

_S13. L16._

She tries to be closer to Light a month into Junior High.

Sayu attends one of the top middle schools in Tokyo, in Japan really, and her entire family is proud and surprised. She hadn't shown much intelligence before, excelling in sports and so deemed a female "jock", and her elementary school wasn't actually all that noteworthy, but Sayu had done especially well on the entrance exam into Wasade (which none of her parents or Light and known she applied to until the test results had been mailed back) and they are glad that both Yagami children are so very bright.

Light offers to help tutor her in whatever she needs, because he is Perfect McSmileyface seventy-percent of the time in the house these days, and Sayu just smiles.

"I'll ask for help when I need to, brother. Don't worry, I'm not that lazy."

It may have been a trick of a light, but she knows it isn't when she sees a flash of Light-nii when he makes a  _yeah-right-and-pigs-will-fly_ face that wants to make her giggle.

But Sayu does need help sometimes, and it's not intellectual sloth that makes that different, and though Light is driven and doesn't understand why if someone works hard that they shouldn't get good results and why the whole world is stupid, Sayu does get it, because she was average and normal and everything else—

Until the day she accepted reality and fantasy and dreams that are true. Until she realized that monsters are real.

And that her brother is one of them.

But Sayu's long since realized, that even if this is true, Light is still her brother, will always be her brother, because she still remembers and cherishes those memories of bright butterfly laughter and wide innocent eyes and a Light so smart but so ignorant of a world that would make him cast a shadow so dark and so cynical. She remembers him picking her up when she scrapped her knee, when he kissed it well and brushed her tears away because he was her brother, and everyone is capable of love.

_(She misses the younger days. Though the nightmares left something to be desired...)_

They were children and they thrived on love, but as they both got older and her parents less indulging and her father farther away and her mother busy over her, Sayu remembered the dark shadow in her brother's eyes turn blacker, as his front turned brighter and more flawless, and she could not see the in-between so well anymore and she would scream and then the dreams would come.

But Sayu is sure that her brother still loves her.

_(He has to, he must, because why would he pretend? ...Right?)_

It's just a matter of how much love before it filters all out when his two selves squash whatever humanity he has left, widen the cracks in his psyche, in a world that bores him to tears, monochrome and black and white and day-to-day that will send him into oblivion, because life is supposed to be lived, not _endured_.

In the possible future to come, Sayu still wonders what she should do, and time is running short, slipping between her fingers and flying away. Is it better to have a passionate Light who believes in twisted justice, than a broken one who will spiral down and never meet his archenemy/parallel opposite/friend(?) in his life that will make his life worth living? Is it worth those lives that could be redeemed, those people who deserved justice of their own, who want to dial out punishments in the way of their government or prove the guilty to be innocent?

Is it even Sayu's decision?

These are the thoughts in her head while Ahppi is away at work and she has no one to talk to before she sleeps.

.

.

.

_S14. L17._

Light brings home an extra notebook one day, black as a starless sky. He smiles and lies to her face when she asks about his day.

Sayu is the only one to notice the hidden book, as it releases a dark, enticing aura that makes her bite her inner cheek and her heart skip and stutter.

She wishes, day after day, that she could have stayed unknowing.

_Ignorance is bliss, and it is something she will never have as she dreams and dreams and dreamsdreamsdreams..._

_._

_._

_._

_S3. L6._

Whimpers. Stifled cries. "...brother...?"

Door opens. Soft footsteps. Small arms around a smaller body. Sweet nothings whispered like soft winds.

"They're just nightmares, little sister... shhh... shhhh..."

Whimpers. "They're so real, big brother."

Arms tighten. "Just remember they're not."

Silence.

"...Big brother?"

"Yes?"

"You love me, right?"

Twist. "You're my little sister!"

"...But you love me, right?"

"We're family, and blood is thicker than anything. Of course, I love you."

Bites lip. "...blood, huh? Thicker than anything?" Pause. "Always?"

No hesitation. "Always."

Sayu smiles, and when Light's breath evens out to match her own, it is only then that she lets a tear fall.

.

.

.

_Her brother lies as well as he breathes._

_(But that is only, later. He is still learning right now...)_

_He is also always - or, more often than not, at least - right._

_(But he doesn't seem to like being proven right all the time...)_

_So, which is truth, here?_


	3. monsters in the mind

_._

_._

_._

_S9-10._

As her dreams keep escalating, she starts to feel like an older woman in a child's body and that - that won't do. This can't happen. She easily remembers that Ahppi could mind-read, so one day, she decides to ask if he could do more than that.

He looks at her, and though she can't read him very well, she knows that the tilt to his head is more curiosity than refusal. He asks her why she asks. And she tells him, when she does scrounge up the courage to speak of nightmares and reality versus fantasy and feeling so, _so_  old in her skin. And then - and then she explains how she wants him to manipulate her mind into two separate entities.

Into two different people in one body.

Why, he asks.

She takes a breath. And explains: she doesn't want to be a "genius" like Light.

Or, at least, perceived as one by others who won't ever understand.

Because she's _not_. She's not intelligent, she's just more knowledgeable than others of a future to come. She can't hide her reactions to things so well; she's not good at acting, at lying. She's not her brother. She wants to be the normal little sister/daughter/friend/friendly face that everyone knows and disregards. Not Yagami Sayu, who had been kidnapped by the mafia and traumatized, who has received care in a mental institution for several years, who's only solace was technology and cyberspace that _had nothing to do with notebooks and traditions and supernatural things,_  who feels older than her years, who has lost both her father and brother and she  _hates looking at them like ghosts-_

Ahppi understands and tries.

It doesn't work very well. She has dissociative identity disorder for five months and then the memories merge once more and she want to scream because she can't- _she can't stand it_. 

A month passes with her in catatonic state that she manages to pass off as her first period and a nasty case of sickness in her school, with only one or two concerned looks cast in her direction.

Ahppi taught, and continues to teach, her how to act.

She joins the theatre club - the newest member with a bubbly personality and friendly demeanour and everyone is _(and so no one actually is)_ friends, or knows the name of this chic and cute little girl who is moderately popular, peers and other class-men say.

It's a slow process at the beginning. Her mask is too brittle and her eyes are too expressive and she is not her brother, but no one really notices at such a young age, so it's okay. By the time she turns ten, she can only make her eyes as blank as Ahppi's, but her smiles and laughs would make Perfect McSmileyface proud if he were ever to notice.

_Maybe he has noticed..._

But no, Sayu is sure Light hadn't really seen his sister for a long time. He is in his little bubble of superiority, and she is just a background character, a side-character, that he maybe-loves in that abstract  _she's my sister of course I have to love her because she's family_ way. Light doesn't truly understand others' feelings, sincerely. Not really. He likely thinks her mood-swings this year are just things that happen when girls grow up or he doesn't think about her at all _(Light cares less and less each day)_.

But, he's not wrong.

Sayu has grown up. 

Just not in a good way.

.

.

.

_S12. L15._

It's a family day outing, and the sun shines almost as bright as her brother.

Father finally got a day off work and their mother quickly uses the weekend as their first family break spent together since Sayu had turned seven. 

She has fun (surprisingly).

"Oh come on, Sayu, it wasn't  _that_ obvious," her brother laughs, his eyes crinkling just a bit more (she's been watching him closely and can tell the difference between a sincere eye crinkle and a forced one).

Sayu grins, "The girl clearly wasn't your type."

"Oh? And what  _is_ my type?" he asks, curiously, placing down his water bottle.

"Intelligent, kind, and a hard worker of course," their father chimes in through a mouthful of his tuna sandwich. "My boy deserves the best!"

"Dear, don't eat with your mouth full!" their mother chides, slapping lightly on his arm, but she's smiling too.

"Hmm, I think as long as they're interesting, Light could tolerate anyone," Sayu decides.

"Interesting?" Mother laughs. "Sayu, dear, being interesting doesn't mean much after the first few meetings. Perhaps someone he could actually  _love_ instead of tolerate would be the best criteria."

Sayu tilts her head, wondering. "But he hasn't loved any of the girls he's dated before."

Light stiffens beside her.

"Well, of course he hasn't," Father says, still eating. "But he'll find someone one day, I'm sure. My son is practically perfect after all, and any girl will want him."

Sayu refrains from saying anything to that as she turns to find PMS instead of her brother.

"Of course, dad!" Light is beaming. His eyes crinkle.

Sayu finishes her chicken sandwich while watching everyone interact and it doesn't startle her when she feels a ghostly hand dab away at her face. Ahppi is kind.

She looks up and sees the skies rolling in dark grey and the sun hidden behind ominous clouds. Another droplet falls.

"Hey, I think it's raining. Maybe we should pack up this picnic?" she hears her mother say. Sayu nods along and turns her head  _just so._ Light won't see her left side as she stores leftover containers into the bags.

"Yeah, I felt a drop on my face already."

.

.

.

"That's incorrect, Miss Sayu."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not that your brother doesn't understand human emotion. He understands it too well. I can see in his eyes that he understands the pain of others, understands them in a way most who hadn't experienced them themselves would feel. He's too empathetic. And that is why the Death Note warped him into something so unrecognizable, because he wanted a perfect world where no one would need to feel such pain.

He loves you. He loves his family. And that, that will be his downfall as he loses sight of that goal and only continues with the means to achieve them. At least, from what I can read of the past-that-was-future in your mind."


End file.
